|
To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul
after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace
could overtake the Soul of the All. If they tell us of its
falling, they must tell us also what caused the fall. And when
did it take place? If from eternity, then the Soul must be
essentially a fallen thing: if at some one moment, why not before
that?
We assert its creative act to be a proof not of decline but
rather of its steadfast hold. Its decline could consist only in
its forgetting the Divine: but if it forgot, how could it create?
Whence does it create but from the things it knew in the Divine?
If it creates from the memory of that vision, it never fell. Even
supposing it to be in some dim intermediate state, it need not be
supposed more likely to decline: any inclination would be towards
its Prior, in an effort to the clearer vision. If any memory at
all remained, what other desire could it have than to retrace the
way?
What could it have been planning to gain by world-creating?
Glory? That would be absurd- a motive borrowed from the sculptors
of our earth.
Finally, if the Soul created by policy and not by sheer need of
its nature, by being characteristically the creative power- how
explain the making of this universe?
And when will it destroy the work? If it repents of its work,
what is it waiting for? If it has not yet repented, then it will
never repent: it must be already accustomed to the world, must be
growing more tender towards it with the passing of time.
Can it be waiting for certain souls still here? Long since would
these have ceased returning for such re-birth, having known in
former life the evils of this sphere; long since would they have
foreborne to come.
Nor may we grant that this world is of unhappy origin because
there are many jarring things in it. Such a judgement would rate
it too high, treating it as the same with the Intelligible Realm
and not merely its reflection.
And yet- what reflection of that world could be conceived more
beautiful than this of ours? What fire could be a nobler
reflection of the fire there than the fire we know here? Or what
other earth than this could have been modelled after that earth?
And what globe more minutely perfect than this, or more admirably
ordered in its course could have been conceived in the image of
the self-centred circling of the World of Intelligibles? And for
a sun figuring the Divine sphere, if it is to be more splendid
than the sun visible to us, what a sun it must be.
|
|